


I was born at the bottom of a wishing well

by ghostwit



Category: Naruto
Genre: An exploration of Yamato's dubiously canonical mild healing factor :), Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Idk how to categorize this? Angst ????, Minor Hatake Kakashi/Yamato | Tenzou, Minor Injuries, Pre-Canon, has ROOT Kinoe w/ all warnings affiliated (you know :|), like. a throwaway line because I can't resist. but it's Yamato centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27505057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostwit/pseuds/ghostwit
Summary: “You’ll let me try something, Kinoe?”The child doesn’t speak, plastering his arms to his sides and nodding as he turns from the scroll on the stand before him.(Mokuton is not the only thing Hashirama's cells carry.)
Relationships: Not in an amicable way but they are like. interacting :|, Shimura Danzou & Yamato | Tenzou
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	I was born at the bottom of a wishing well

**Author's Note:**

> TW: ROOT-style child abuse, y'kn. First part is uh, pre-Yukimi and the reflection at the end has him anywhere from (NARUTO TIMELINE IS SO HELLISH I'M LOOKING FOR AN AGE BUT LIKE. ANY TIME AFTER HE GETS MOVED FROM FOUNDATION TO REGULAR ANBU).

Danzo’s countenance has never even begun to approach softness, a stoniness to it both hand-chiseled and innate, but he loosens the crimp of his mouth when he turns to Kinoe, “You’ll let me try something, Kinoe?” 

The child doesn’t speak, plastering his arms to his sides and nodding as he turns from the scroll on the stand before him. The echo of Danzo’s voice, of his codename--name--in the desolate training room, narrowing into the headspace of its sole occupant, is answer enough. Keeps nodding even as a bandaged hand lifts one arm forward, pliant and young with the flex of a sapling. The light in Danzo’s eye blurs on the edges before flickering, dipping into pure white with motion. 

The flash of a kunai from beneath a sleeve, fast enough that blood mists into the air following the welling gash along his forearm, a punch of breath like a fist to the base of his sternum. Kinoe swallows, watches the blood drip. Watches the blood drip. Feels his face screwing up before stopping himself, two warm speckles onto concrete and he can feel Kinoe slotting itself over his face again. 

The cut is shallow, just barely parting the surface of the skin--still, it bleeds, poppies on snow--split cell by cell on the surface and ragged and fluttery at the edges with the speed of the strike and Danzo stares, intently, inscrutable, an expression so intense it pulls nausea in the base of Kinoe’s stomach and along the back of his throat, and he forces himself to look away. 

Dripping still, sliding down the length of his arm and pooling by his sandals in a way that ensures when he steps away from this suspended moment of time, his soles will peel with an unpleasantly tacky noise. Danzo uses the brunt of his palm to slam the flaps of skin that lift away, delicate as crepe, and Kinoe swallows again, gulps down the pain like a soldier pill. 

And, somehow, with time frozen and hanging crystallized in Kinoe’s throat, the gash begins to close. Knitting, cell by cell, the same way it had opened, the mokuton pulling delightedly on his skin like the pushing of buds through sinewy earth, easy and unruly and humming with something Kinoe aches to grasp. The pink of flesh is glistening beneath the part, replaced in mere moments--four breaths, in and out, deep and measured, Kinoe counts; Danzo’s count is much more precise--with a white that glistens, light lancing along the fresh scar beneath the blood beginning to dry on the skin.

“Hm.” Danzo lip furrows again, and he drops Kinoe's arm to hang limp at his side. The stream is sluggish and clotted by now, but it makes its way to the boy’s wrist, seeps between his knuckles in its thick trickle. “Return to your training.”

Kinoe nods, nods until Danzo is out of sight, one arm stiff with Foundation drilling and the other, coated in his own blood, fluttering. Absurdly, he no longer wants it--the arm, wants it gone, feels it disembodied before him--a pervasive sense of uncleanliness following along with the raising of the thin, pale hairs of his forearm when the blood dries them stiff. 

He shifts his feet; there it is, the blood-sticky noise. His blood. His hands twitch on the next controlled outbreath, spidering into a form for water release that bowls him over as it spirals with offensive force from the shallow pit in the center of the room. 

He lays, winded and drenched, blinking the water from his eyes and trying to keep his limbs from floating. He’s lost, throat tight with something unknown and he blinks harder, trying to free himself of it. The tickle of mokuton unfurling verdant fronds of pressure in his chakra network, begging release, does little to help make sense of the prior event and why it’s set him so adrift, Konoha’s greatest pride dizzying him further.  _ Return to your training.  _

He tucks himself fetal, swiveling on the position to hunch on his knees with a paranoid sense of urgency, movement fast enough to skim the skin of his knees and hands. He gasps, weight on albicant knuckles. He rises. Locks his hands into the serpent seal with a newfound swiftness, even with joints stiffened by cold water. 

The scar on his forearm has dwindled to a hair’s width, scraped knuckles gone the plasma-sticky color of whey. Gone pink. Gone a light-starved tan, cleared of freckles in a brush-stroke swipe over their width. The ground surges with an indignation he can't name.  


* * *

The Foundation is locked from Tenzo, from the mind through compartmentalization and from body in the stripes that bind his tongue. 

For a brief second, though, with another operative snapping a dislocated shoulder into the socket with a meaty punch of displaced air and forced sinew, gasping with quickly masked intrigue as he flexes the arm and gives it a roll, he feels scraped empty, bile rushing to fill the interstices. 

With another agent handing him a bandage he waves away for a wound already closed, their head tilted in curiosity. With an enemy’s sharpened senbon left too long deep in his thigh in the heat of battle, speared flesh knitting around it and nearly sucking it in. With his senpai pressing languid fingers into a sprained ankle that simmered too easily into standard fare muscle soreness, craning into the touch for reasons straying further and further from physical comfort.

He feels dizzy, a distant nausea climbing from the pristine skin of his forearm. 

**Author's Note:**

> WHEW, who thought I'd ever be writing for this fandom again. I have missed my boy T__T I have another piece from 2019 I have to polish with him but that should be up in a bit. Please do not go look at my old work it is not any good if I recall suhdyfjtsdgyfh. Anyway, yeah, I keep looking for the databook that confirms his healing factor but I can't find a translation that mentions it? So, like, eh. 
> 
> Oka. No thoughts on this piece. Feel free to drop a comment if you have any, though, it's always welcome and makes my day <3 Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> hazeism.tumblr.com


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